Interview with José Ignacio López Soria For those who like serious and profound philosophical reflections, I share here an interview Washing Lucas, one of my writers favorite philosopher Jose Ignacio Lopez Soria, a sharp and very rich dialogue about the importance and the new role it must assume the philosophers of our time, the weight of hermeneutics and multiculturalism in our region, the explanation of meaning in his quest to overcome not forgetting the modern discourse, and finally the words of some writers who are already doing and winning their space with their studies of philosophy Peru, among which we see some familiar names. Without further preamble, I hope you enjoy this text as I do.
By Lucas Washing *
J oseph Ignacio López Soria was born in Spain in 1937. Wine as a Jesuit in Peru in 1957.
Study with the Jesuits in Peru and Spain, classical humanities and philosophy, and then, as secular history studies completed in Lima and spent 5 years in Hungary doing research on Gyorgy Lukacs.
a degree in Philosophy, Doctor of Philosophy, Doctor of History and Ph. D (philosophy). Since 1967 is linked, as a professor at the National Engineering University, an institution of which he was rector in the period 1984-1989. He has taught also in other Peruvian and foreign universities.
is the author of 21 books of history and philosophy, several dozen articles in journals of Peru and abroad, and a frequent contributor to opinion pages in newspapers in Lima. Philosophy books: Thought of Joseph Baquijano and Carrillo (1971), economic ideology of the "Mercurio Peruano" (1972), The mode of production in Peru and Other Essays (1977), Delo tragic utopia. The first Lukacs (1978), fascist thinking (1930-1945) (1981), Education and Culture to a National Project (1987). press books have Keys to think Latin America ( as editor) and Goodbye Mariátegui. Think key in Peru postmodern.
is currently professor of graduate studies at the National Engineering University and the Universidad Mayor de San Marcos, and permanent representative and regional director of the Organization of Iberoamerican States for Education, Science and Culture in Bolivia , Ecuador and Peru (Lucas Wash).
Let me begin by asking about one of their activities seems at odds with the philosophy. I mean his performance as president of the National Engineering University. While discussions on the subject left behind, is often think that philosophy and philosophers have little to do with practical activities. It would be interesting to tell us that training as a philosopher may be useful not only for teaching but also for knowledge management and organizations. (An example of a philosopher able to turn his thoughts into actions and artifacts is Miguel Ángel Quintanilla, who, among other things, directs Novatores, which is a virtual platform to advise on science and technology).
As is known, there is a theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy. The former teaches to think, the second to behave correctly. The foundation of any effective management is the ability to discern and the will to act according to ethical principles. These two components, discernment and morality are necessary conditions of any socially efficient management, emphasizing the word "social" because efficiency when it comes to managing a public entity, is to make it so that this institution to play properly roles that society assigned. Technical and administrative components of management are removed from the experience, it comprises of experts and delegate to them.
Sounds good example of my friend Miguel Ángel Quintanilla, now secretary of state (deputy minister) of universities from the Ministry of Education of Spain. We have other examples in the area: the philosopher José Carlos Ballon leads, with proven efficiency, the Publishing Fund of the University of San Marcos, Juan was an excellent deputy Abugattás pedagogical management; Luis Bacigalupo has today, he Catholic University, the relationship the social sectors has led to Pepi Patrón destinations Transparency Masters .
Moreover my long stay in the UNI allowed me to realize that in addition to speech freedoms, was developed in Peru a modern welfare discourse, developed by engineers, scientists and architects, and generally unknown to the philosophers and social scientists. Along with the engineers and architects learned to think the city and see the close relationship, and think of Lukacs Theory of the Novel - between the modern novel and urban life. My contributions to the history of engineering have to do likewise with my status as professor at the UNI.
What role can philosophy play in a globalized world, phenomenal changes and permanent crisis?
What touches philosophy today, as he has always played, is to elevate the conditions of life concept to help us know what to expect and guide us in the world. The complexity of current conditions more difficult task for philosophy. The difficulty comes mainly from three current components that belong together: the weakening of the securities to which we had used modern thinking, globalization or world-system formation, and release differences or making word diversity. Each of these trends and the three overall places us in a context of income you need to know ¨ rational management · accordingly.
securities loss frequently leads to fundamentalism and relativism, proven unsuitable positions. I think philosophically more fruitful than that loss leads to perplexity, an attitude that is, in my opinion, the most conducive to mute the loss in profit. The gain, however, is not a substitute for other securities, but rather to stick to convictions (cognitive, ethical, legal, political, etc) open to dialogue and respect for diversity.
Globalization can lead to an undesirable homogenization or environmental disasters imaginable now, but may also widen and pave the road for the appropriation of human wealth, and even convinced of the urgency of a nature-friendly treatment .
The release of the differences may result in relativism which seeks to justify the unjustifiable, but more often involves taking the floor for others to tell their own history and ways of seeing and living their being in the world . Taken seriously, the release of the differences is the environment necessary for a joyful and enriching coexistence of diversities.
What I really mean, and I say emphatically, is that under the looming shadow of this light, the winter we are facing today announced a new spring. Depends on our commitment to shine the light and shoot this spring.
Undoubtedly, there is now philosophical activity in Peru, published increasingly, national conferences are held regularly and there is contact with academic institutions around the world. How would you characterize the philosophy and contemporary philosophical activity in Peru?
Having more philosophical activity does not ensure by itself that there is more philosophy. If we understand philosophy think of ourselves as beings in the world we live in, I'm not sure that there are now more philosophy in Peru before. No bit of philosophical activity is to reconstruct past thoughts, ie to make a story, so positivist philosophy. The approach to the history of philosophical thought is a necessary but not sufficient for think philosophically our time. This condition becomes sufficient when the approach is not the mere recording and reconstruction of the past, but consists in a dialogue with the messages that come from the past by bringing them to the presence, ¨ remembering ¨, again passing through the heart. This will provide dignity to the past history of our own present, and manages to give historical depth to our thinking today.
the history of thought in modern Peruvian two moments particularly rich: the 20 and 60 of the last century. I'm not sure the current thinkers were right to think so rich and suggestive as they did in the 20 Mariátegui, Haya, Belaunde and Basadre, and in the 60 Salazar Bondy, Miro Quesada and Gustavo Gutiérrez. They moved first to the dawn of the modern project, the second, at the time that modern thought was still able to inspire a societal project. To us to live a stallion season distrust of the modern project because we know that it has not only fulfilled the promise announced (freedom, justice, solidarity, transparent society, well ...) but no longer has the possibility to fulfill within the nation-state that the institutional dimensions of this are being overwhelmed by the trends that globalization alluded, release of the differences, etc. This overflow can be understood as a breakdown of the institutions that shaped his life, but can also be read as the sprouting of new life that can not be already preset forms.
In this context, Peru has more philosophy should mean that philosophers assume the theoretical challenge of thinking about living conditions not foreseen by our ancestors, thinking, dialoguing with them, what they did not think . Perhaps the fact that most philosophical activity, although this is merely reconstructive history of thought, and reveals an anxiety that can lead us to assume the above challenge.
Can you tell us, with a broad view of Latin America, which are now predominant philosophical ideas, or what important issues being raised thoughts that may be of some interest?
of philosophy in Latin America two orientations are particularly interested me, for me, are intertwined: the hermeneutics and the philosophy of multiculturalism.
Le hermeneutics as repeated Gianni Vattimo, is becoming the Koine or common language of our time because it deals with "fear and trembling" thinking, as did Kierkegaard with respect to believe. Understood not only as an exegesis of sacred texts (Schleiermacher) or as a method characteristic of the "human sciences" (Dilthey), but as a way of knowing who is known to be-in-the-world (Heidegger) developed hermeneutics by Gadamer and supported by Vattimo gives theoretical and methodological substance to the "weak thought", thought to dissolve the fastness of traditional metaphysics, weakens the assurances of modern science, sheds universal traits and beliefs, thus facilitating intercultural dialogue.
Interculturalism is approached from different perspectives: sociological, political, ethical, religious, political philosophy, theoretical philosophy. My Friends philosophy of liberation (Dussel, Fornet-Betancourt) make essential reading intercultural ethics, which is dependent on more than one aspect of liberation theology (Gustavo Gutierrez). In Peru, the philosopher most responsible for multiculturalism is Fidel Tubino, from an anthropological and ethical-political.
While recognizing the merits of the suggestive approaches of my colleagues, I prefer to look interculturalism from hermeneutics, I mean it as a condition (cognitive) of the possibility of intercultural dialogue, because only assuming that my understanding is always interpretation respect for other interpretations and listen carefully to dialogue with them.
In a world like ours , as the town of diversity, philosophical thought, from hermeneutics and the philosophy of multiculturalism, he puts his two cents to a worthy and happy coexistence of the diverse .
When you write the article "Farewell to the modern discourse in Peru" (in humerus bone 39) can be said that he is speaking out against or illustration is also suggesting that be proclaimed relativism?
Neither one nor the other. Say goodbye to the modern discourse does not mean speaking out against the figure (as he thinks Habermas), falling into irrationalism (as anticipated Lukács), agreeing with relativism or abandoned the consumerist hedonism (as held by Daniel Bell).
Perhaps the first thing to understand is that saying goodbye does not mean forgetting. In certain times and for various reasons, say goodbye to our parents, our friends, but neither forget nor cease to feel bound to them. What I contend is that the modern project is the history of our own present, a past whose messages I hear with devotion and often bring to presence, but that is no longer a horizon of sense to know what to expect and think human society.
Say goodbye to the modern discourse mean in the philosophical, not to be pigeonholed by the philosophy of consciousness and the subject, the cornerstone of modern thinking, or stay glued to the consideration of truth as correspondence or appropriateness. It also means abandoning the idea of \u200b\u200ba universal theological history, straight, rigidly unconfessedly periodized and westernized. Means in order to doubt the solidity of the foundations and the supremacy of one on the manifold.
But say goodbye to the modern discourse is not to overcome and replaced by another speech encompassing. The postmodern mood is rather simple. This is not a new discourse, but a perspective that is content to think the unthought by the philosophical tradition: intersubjectivity, the truth and reveal and openness, the importance of constitutional recognition of identity, the plurality of stories, unsurpassed, the disharmonic, discontinuous, etc.
What I contend for Peru as nation-state is that the discourse of modernity has two faces-the freedoms and welfare-and that these two faces have not ever looked at each other and have discussed among themselves. I argue further that it is too late for it because on one hand, the differences have spoken and they are increasingly less willing to have them tell their own story, and, secondly, because we are engaged, wanting or unwittingly, in the process of globalization to which girls are the institutional dimensions of modernity in the nation-state.
summon the departure of so much modern discourse invites us to think otherwise, or draw attention to what I think deserves more: it is possible and desirable to live dignified and happily together and recognizing each other as being different.
You have prepared a bibliography on intercultural , which incidentally is a serious and systematic starting a research topic, a sample of academic responsibility. I want to know the relevance of philosophy on this issue which, as you say, he is presenting special attention. What aspects concern you edges or the philosophy?
From the foregoing reflections is easy to deduce that the issue of multiculturalism is particularly attractive to me. Everyone, especially in Peru, we live in multicultural boundaries and have intercultural experiences. I have also performed live in particularly intercultural: years after my stays in socialist Hungary, I had work in Tunisia in an international NGO with 21 colleagues from 19 countries in the Arab world, sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe. Immersed in this environment, I began to see multiculturalism as an advantage and think multiculturalism as a source of personal enrichment and social dynamism.
When I returned to Peru hosted a Peruvian-European intercultural bilingual education and incorporate multiculturalism as a topic for my graduate classes at San Marcos and UNI. It led me to my learning further and systematically and to furnish the study of the subject prepared a brief annotated bibliography slightly. That literature has been happily obsolete because in the few years that have passed since then foreign and Peruvian production has been enriched. My intention, as I say, was to facilitate the approach to a topic that was somewhat theoretical then but now its interesting experience, particularly in the field of intercultural bilingual education and the inclusion of higher education.
I write to answer the second part of your question, the issue of multiculturalism is not only an interesting subject of study or a new chapter in the syllabus of a course. It is, especially for us in Peru, learning: finally learning to live happily together in dignity and being different. We all have to help make this possible, knowing that it is not easy for reasons having much to do with the perceptions, attitudes and individual values, and the ways that we have come to social events.
reiterate that philosophy touches, first, help us to put off those traditions that keep us from recognizing the value of another, and, second, to facilitate intercultural dialogue in various ways, including not without important the use of a "weak ontology" knows the contingent, particular and interpretation of own theoretical elaborations. None of this, however, leads to relativism. Unlike fundamentalism, who believe that they alone are close to God, preach relativism that we are all equally close to God. This means that all cultures are equally supported by solid fundamentals. The possibility of opening up to multiculturalism goes more by the belief, taken from Nietzsche, that God is dead, there are no proper grounds and, therefore, to express it in terms Dostoevsky, that all are equally far from God.
In discussions of the philosopher in Peru, some have suggested that there was a philosophical thought in pre-Hispanic Andean world, others, however, rule out this possibility. Could interfere in this discussion and put lights in order to bring the debate to refine some conceptual tools? Or do you think the issue is irrelevant to the current thinking?
do not think the issue is irrelevant, but I do not feel qualified to intervene in this debate because, although fungo historian in ancient Peru, which I call the pre-Hispanic, not my specialty. It's easy, however, deduct from my previous reflections that, whether or not formally consider philosophy Andean thought, the truth is that it is part of our past and our present, and, therefore, calls us to recognize and interact with the philosophically.
I want, with the experience of having trained as a philosopher, having studied this discipline, focus their study on a small program for philosophical studies in Peru. What should we do in our Peruvian and Latin American to improve the study of philosophy?
I've never been a tenured professor at a college or specialty philosophy. He has spent his life, as far as teaching is concerned, engineers, architects, scientists and scholars. I have not, therefore, experience in curriculum development to be philosophers. I can, however, repeat what my teachers told me: " Multum sed non fine." is not get into many things but some learn well and deeply, savor, ponder them and expose them dialogically.
The approach to what is thought by others (the philosophical tradition) has been and remains a source of enrichment. I understand that enrichment is not as an accumulation of information on the history of philosophy, but as understanding of the issues that concerned our ancestors in their historical and cultural contexts, and how to address them. Interested, in my view, dialogue with the past and not merely reducing it to register under study. In this dialogue with the philosophical tradition one learns to identify the issues that deserve more thought, following in the footsteps of our predecessors, but especially considering what they did not think.
addition to maintaining this relationship affective but elective with our own philosophical tradition, philosophy is always to know this. It, therefore, that training include philosophical reflections about the times we live in and how the theoretical and practical challenges posed by the historical moment. Today we have several challenges - to which I have referred to repeatedly in this interview, calling for us to think philosophically: the weakening of the discourses of emancipation, liberation of the differences, hermeneutics and ontology today, the collapse of state nation - blocks the formation of multinational and world-system unsurpassed in the ownership, valuation of intersubjectivity and recognition, knowledge-based society, etc.. Of these issues underline the importance of multiculturalism because glimpse that the viability of our societies and the possibility to enrich the human experience since they go through thinking and give ourselves ways of living that facilitate the meeting of cultural diversities that we inhabit. In a paper I have argued that in seeking this form of coexistence is the utopia of our time.
leave to the experts in curriculum incorporating these and other issues into the educational process of the philosophers. It would be unfortunate, however, that these issues were merely chapters of disciplines as philosophy student must pass, and not have to think about problems and manage them wisely.
You are a student of Gyorgy Lukacs. We know you got a scholarship to study with this great thinker. Tell us how it happened. Tell us what attracted you to the Hungarian thinker who inspired many politicians and thinkers.
My way to Lukács began, unknowingly, during my studies in philosophy in Spain, when I learned that Yves Calvet had to read Marx from Hegel. Back in Lima, worked History and Class Consciousness . His reading I confirm the relevance of the route that I had left Calvet. An immediate result of reading History and Class Consciousness was that the books of Louis Althusser and, especially, his disciple Marta Harnecker I dropped out of hand.
then requested a research grant from the Hungarian government to work with Lukács. The scholarship I was soon granted and the UNI, a University of engineers, architects and scientists, granted me leave of there. When I was preparing my travel, died Lukacs, 85. The Hungarian Academy of Sciences, in particular its Institute of Philosophy sent me that, through its embassy in Lima, Lukacs had died, but that if he wished he could go to Budapest to work at the Library-Archive Lukács under the guidance of his disciples. The head of the Chair of English at the Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest, my good friend Matias Horanyi, encouraged me to not let this opportunity and I offered to work with them in that chair. I packed my bags and come to Budapest in the cold winter of 1971 with my wife and my daughter just 10 months.
The first academy in Budapest experience shook me deeply. On the day of my presentation at the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences agreed with efficiency awards a number of philosophers. One of them stood up and said he accepted the award from an institution that had been stripped of their posts and condemned to silence some of his colleagues, just to Lukács's closest disciples:
Ágnes Heller, Ferenc Fehér, Gyory Márkus and Mihaly Vajda, who represented the School of Budapest. I stayed in one piece. Years later, they all got the "placet" state to migrate and make their way abroad: Heller, Fehér and Vajda Márkus in Australia and in West Germany.
Although for some time had the opportunity to talk with the aforementioned "dissidents", who sought from the young Marx to humanize the "really existing socialism ', my tutors were officially philosophers who had no problems with the" naming "of the Party of which, indeed, had little to learn. I locked myself because, in the Archive-Library Lukács, in the Archives of the Socialist Workers Party and libraries Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Philosophy, institutions all I opened wide its doors and that even allowed me to review unpublished Lukács or on it to which Hungarian researchers had no access. I found in those environments with foreign scholars Lukács: American, Japanese and Western Europeans primarily. Some of them returned later to find them on the international circuit of Lukacs.
addition to my classes on Latin American thought in the department of English at the Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest and the translation of the Latin American History , Tibor Wittman, and some texts and Lukacs Heller, the visible fruits of my work in Hungary were the book From the tragic to the utopian. The first Lukacs published by Monte Avila, Caracas, a book on the Budapest School, I never got to finish, several articles on the Hungarian philosopher, published in magazines in Peru, France, Spain, Hungary, Mexico and Venezuela, a Ph. D (philosophy) that I got at the Academy of Sciences, a Ph.D. in history of my wife at the University of Szeged, the growth of my daughter's age and wisdom and friendship of Antonio Cisneros, Black and a handful of Hungarian colleagues.
From Lukács drew me first, his Hegelian approach to Marxism, Western Marxism food to the call and the initial positions of the Frankfurt School, and then, when I had the opportunity to investigate his intellectual and political thought-his road to socialism from the Hungarian bourgeois radicalism she felt, from his youth, a "guest tolerated." After an initial tour of the production Lukacs, including unpublished and go into the history of Hungary, chose as a research subject's intellectual evolution Young Lukács. The best known works of this stage are the soul and the ways (1910) and Theory of the Novel (1916), but also Lukács wrote two thick volumes of History of the development of modern drama (1916) and three texts that were handwritten until much Later: The Daily (1911), Philosophy of Art (1912-1918) and Heidelberg Aesthetics (1912-1918). The analysis of its books and numerous articles published in Hungarian and German magazines can realize that pre-Marxist Lukács was interested, first, by the theater in general, then, for drama and finally, the novel. This approach to literature food after subsequent reflections on aesthetics. The environment in which then moved (the environment of Max Weber in Heidelberg, the economists Ernst Bloch, the relationship with Arnold Hauser, Georg Simmel, Károly Mannheim, Károly Polanyi, Béla Bartok, Zoltan Kodaly, Thomas Mann and others) allowed to participate in intellectual circles more restless creative and then central Europe.
I returned to Hungary in the 78 to continue my research, and then in 1993, after the collapse of the socialist system. I met some colleagues comfortably sprawled on the couches of the new order, and some as the most critical from a socialist perspective, totally disoriented, they had gotten out of hand the object of their concerns and commitments, and ordinary people discovering I was told that " fontosak vagyunk" ("we matter") we have in mind, we listen, we puffed up ... even if only verbally.
Do you think there is something that Lukács rescue the study of philosophy today?
The question presupposes the theories of philosophers become obsolete with the passage of time because they are functional to a past that has nothing to do with our present. This assumption leads frequently to ask what is the actual and out of date, or no longer valid and worth of a particular author. Under that question lies an objectivist conception of the history of thought. From this premise, the historian of philosophy interested in collecting data and petrified, recording them thoroughly.
My position on the last of thought is dialogue. I approached this last, scalpel in hand, to separate the healthy rotten or obsolescence of the actual. I propose, rather, look at it as past of my own present and discuss their messages to, as I said, give dignity to our ancestors and provide historical depth to our thinking of this. Like any other author of the most interesting now about Lukacs is thinking, talking with him, he himself thought. So I have not raised the problem of what is salvageable from the thought of Lukacs, because for me that thought is not an object but a talk and a time that is not mine but without which I could not talk and my own time.
you a philosopher committed?
My commitment, like many others, is with the truth, goodness and beauty and in practice, contributing to the creation of forms of social interaction that facilitate the full deployment of human possibility in contexts free of violence.
If anything, I stand others, on theoretical grounds, is that for me the notions of truth, good and beauty are never absolute or are immovably founded, but they are always private and are transcended history and therefore open to dialogue. These notions are the result of various historical forms of human coexistence and expressed in language equally historic and speak languages \u200b\u200bthat are spoken.
In the field of practice, I stand out from others in the consideration that the full deployment of human possibility is a future goal which is to come, even sacrificing the present, but a way of walk and live the present, emphasis on intersubjectivity as constitutive of the subject, the importance of recognition for the construction of identity, regardless of the truth and openness, the need to present my beliefs with arguments, multiculturalism understood as dignified and joyful gathering of diversity, the thinking weak vattimiano cutting, etc..
Although this is not the place to argue my conviction, I am convinced that only "de-absolutizing" the notions of truth, good and beauty, and building a living at the mercy of emphasis listed may facilitate the This slow deployment of the possibility human. With this theoretical and practical perspective is that I'm committed.
Finally What is your assessment of the twentieth century Peruvian philosophy? I ask also, an appreciation of the contributions of Augusto Salazar Bondy.
As you know, I'm no expert on Peruvian history of philosophy. The expert par excellence is my friend David Sobral, joined today by Augusto Ruiz Zevallos and Augusto Castro. We take stock of philosophy in Peru is therefore out of reach. I can write, but I'm glad that philosophical activity has increased markedly in recent years, philosophers of the Catholic University are no longer preliterate to become - with the momentum of Miguel Giusti-prolific and organizers in discussions of international significance, that philosophy today is today not only an academic discipline in the classroom but is currently engaged in thinking and do get, as Lerner and Pepi Patron in the development process of citizenship, transparency and respect for human rights go leading the way, with Fidel Tubino to head an intercultural perspective to think philosophically Peru, that philosophers San Marcos, with the prominence of José Carlos Ballon and accompanying Maria Luisa Rivara wise-are recovering philosophical thought of the days of colonialism, to continue studying, as they have done Sobrevilla, Castro-Ruiz Zevallos and thought modern Peru, Antonio Peña continue its efforts to recover and highlight the Andean thought that philosophers from the Universidad Antonio Ruiz de Montoya think the relationship between ethics and politics, as are also thinking of Luis Bacigalupo, Solomon Lerner and others, to develop the phenomenological and hermeneutical circle, with the participation of Rosemary Rizo- Pattern, Cecilia Monteagudo and others who keep running philosophy journals, Aletheia, Archives of the Peruvian Society of Philosophy, Arete, Yachay Studies and Philosophy and Philosophy hosting contributions other magazines such as the humerus bone, Books & Arts , towns, Puente, being studied Latin American thought, as do David Sobral, Ciro Alegría Pablo Quintanilla, who persevere in their efforts for keeping the latter a collaboration website with Peruvian philosophers, that a young San Marcos Ruben Quiroz, walk through the world by organizing conferences and inviting philosophical generations of philosophers to publish in the journal Solar .
All this, which is what I know, I'm happy, but I, like many colleagues, a pain in my heart: John Abugattás left us too soon, almost without saying goodbye, and he were particular wisdom and ethical commitment to the good life.
Nor am I an expert in the work of Augusto Salazar Bondy, but I appreciate your contributions to me most important: having the form, for the first time, corpus of philosophical thought in modern Peru History of ideas in contemporary Peru, and Peru have thought the first proposal from a "philosophy of liberation" in Between Scylla and Charybdis and other writings, contributing to give theoretical substance to the then popular theory of domination.
* From: Lucas Wash: The roles of philosophy. Moon. Fund UIGV Publishing, 2007.
